Cultural Islands

 

 

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Cultural Islands is a concept designed to offer a solution to the challenges that are brought about by different organizational cultures. This is in recognition that a corporation may include members from different occupations and nationalities as well. In that case, this brings together diverse cultures in one place. In such situation, there is likely to be a lack of coordination. In order to deal with this shortcoming, the leaders in such situation have to embrace the concept of cultural islands where the different cultures are suspended to improve the teamwork.

Benefits

This will lead to certain benefits. One of these is that there is bound to be more coordination in the team, as the cultural restrictions are removed. The team members are therefore able to communicate more effectively despite their different cultural backgrounds. The organization can also achieve greater success with this concept. If the accountants, the engineers, and the managers can sit and work together harmoniously, then effective solutions can be achieved. Additionally, if the workers can sit on one table with their managers, where the culture of hierarchy and authority is suspended, then there is likely to be a better flow of ideas. The other benefit is that this concept does not regard the different organizational cultures and their essence. There is, therefore, no intention to change the company’s values which have been attained over a long period of time. Instead it only ‘suspends’ such cultures. Through the concept of cultural islands, teams involving members from different nationalities and occupations can, therefore, work more effectively. Cultural islands can also improve relations among different occupations as the team shares information directly.

 

Challenges

One of the major challenges that would be faced during implementing the cultural island strategy is the difficulty in suspending the different cultures. This is because every professional has their own strong culture that they identify with and which they cannot switch on and off automatically. The other difficulty is in suspending the culture of authority. Cultural islands require that the leaders practice humility given that they are not conversant with the profession of every member on the team. Those in authority might find this difficult as they are used to being in charge. The implementation of this concept also requires cultural literacy which is not always the case. Most professionals have attained specialization in their fields and are, therefore, not well aware of the cultures outside their fields.

Organizational application

When it comes to an example of a company that is utilizing the concept of cultural islands, one of the best examples is Google. This is a company that is a mixture of diverse occupations and multicultural backgrounds. The occupations listed under the Google Company include Engineering and technology, marketing, sales and support, business strategy, design, legal, and finance. Google leadership is able to create teamwork that combines all these different occupations to achieve success. In fact, one of the key dynamics in Google teamwork is the creation of an environment whereby every member feels accommodated and safe (Bariso, 2018). This is in the spirit of a cultural island. This way, everyone feels free to contribute without being looked down upon. The result is that Google is one of the most successful global companies to date. It keeps coming up with new products that are useful and satisfactory to the consumers.

References

Bariso, J. (2018). Google Spent Years Studying Effective Teams. This Single Quality Contributed Most to Their Success. Inc. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/google-spent-years-studying-effective-teams-this-single-quality-contributed-most-to-their-success.html

 

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